Tag: relationships

I don’t care what I look like.
I don’t care that I make mistakes.
I don’t care that my thoughts go off on wild, unhelpful tangents.
I don’t care that I get afraid or triggered.
I don’t care to spend so much time Digging Deep. (Gasp! I know!) Continue reading “The More I Know Myself, The Less I Care”

(This was originally shared on another lovely blog which has since been taken down. I’m reposting it here, as a reminder to myself as well.)

We all have our paths to walk down in life. As we walk we experience the things we tend to experience – the valleys, the marshes, the darkness of the woods. Sometimes we travel alone. Sometimes we travel with others for a time, and then our paths diverge again. Continue reading “The Wisdom of Life’s Immoveable Objects”

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two necessary ingredients to solve any problem, to cure any woe, to heal any pain, to connect any souls. (I didn’t mean to make that sound all rhyme-y but I’m going with it.)

Do you know how hard it was to title this post? I almost called it “The Four Mistakes of Seeking Self-Awareness” but vague and noncommittal woo-woo jargon only sometimes float my boat and never for titles. Anyway, what I hope you know I’m talking about is those of us that are committed to rising up out of the habit of sleep-walking through our lives to grow spiritually and inter-personally in ways that fulfill and satisfy our desire to experience all that Life is offering and asking of us.

I’m talking to those of us who want to be awake and embracing Life. Those of us who already live pretty unconventionally, even if it’s only vicariously right now. Those of us who want more.

I’m talking from experience, too. Experience in my own life. Experience with clients who stumble with the same things.

These are the four biggest mistakes I see us all make:

1. We try to work on others as much as (or more often than) we work on ourselves:

Some people call this projecting. I look at it like a Fix It mode. We’re trying to “fix” our lives and we do so by meddling in what other people “should” be doing in their own lives. We (and by we, I also mean I) constantly think the problem is someone else’s, and if we can only fix our partner or our child or that really annoying neighbor who keeps triggering our desire to get all stabby THEN we will be able to reach personal enlightenment. (Essentially, we make our joy the responsibility of someone else.) OR we have to tell everyone we see with a “problem” about this new, great technique or practice we have. We essentially try to coach people we’re not meant to coach, instead of practicing the love and acceptance we know we’re called to practice.

The answer: That person or thing outside of yourself that you’re trying to fix or help or change is there only to reflect back to you the internal work you need to do. Take what is it they are bringing up in you and DIG IN to it. Bite your tongue or take a walk every time you’re tempted to “help”. The greatest gift you can give them is your own best self in full presence, love, and acceptance of where they are, with the trust that they don’t need fixing or changing.

2. Sharing too much, too soon (or with the wrong people):

I’ve found there is an incubation period with both our dreams and with our healing/growth. There is a time to share and there is an even greater time (especially in the beginning) to hold our Inner Work Cards close to our chest. There are also spaces in which to share that are safe and can hold you in gentleness and nonjudgment and there are spaces that will be too much, too bright, too harsh, too upfront, too cold, or too out of alignment. We sometimes like to blame the people or the space, and call them rude or harsh, and hold onto that hurt we felt for years to come instead of seeing the truth of it: that it wasn’t a right fit. There are also people who just won’t get it, won’t understand where you are, and if your inner work is in its infant stages, they can easily knock you right back down. But none of this is the fault of the people or space; they may be perfectly what you need at another time in your “journey”. They just aren’t right now.

The answer: You wouldn’t subject a just-walking and wobbly baby to a Black Friday sales crowd. They aren’t near ready for that kind of crazy movement. Neither is your heart while it’s stretching itself and still wobbly in its beliefs and practice. Find safe and sacred spaces with people who have been where you are or are there now, places that hold you and nudge you, but not before you’re ready.

3. Not going deep enough:

Oh this one is sort of a pet peeve (and yes, I DIG IN to that!). I can’t tell you how many people I meet insist they only need to repeat their mantra more, or go to yoga more, or change their diet (again), or latch onto that new shiny Fix-It-All Machine. They keep themselves BUSY so they can avoid the real inner work they need to do. They don’t want to DIG IN (hell, who really does? It’s a mess in there and our survival instinct likes to keep us safe from pain) so they try to Build Out…they ignore what’s happening beneath the surface and pile more answers over it to keep the real stuff really hidden. It usually leads to feeling really manic and scattered and we see the same patterns resurface and the real problem never really, finally heal itself.

The answer: Slow the eff down. Stop latching onto something new. Instead allow most things to drop away. Pick one thing – probably the book or practice or person who calls to you the most but likely freaks you out a bit – and focus all your energy on that. Don’t let yourself stop when it starts to get messy or uncomfortable. Know that that is when the good stuff happens: when you clear out all the yuck keeping you from it.

4. Staying too deep, too long:

You know the difference between Digging Deep and digging yourself a grave? How long you stay down with the muck you’ve dug up. It WILL get messy and there are PLENTY of opportunities to feel like total shit, depressed and hopeless, or not good enough. The difference between feeling like a failure that can’t change your own patterns and the person who finds themselves in freedom and joy and Wide-Open-Arm-ness to Life is the person who at some point STOPS digging and stops swimming around in their head and all the junk that our heads are capable of creating (and making us believe is true), and starts planting and nurturing other seeds.

The answer: Get out of your head! Get moving instead.

And because that’s a catchy little rhyme, I’ll just leave it at that. 😉

I sometimes throw around the word Ego. But I’m really not fond of the common definition or the connotation.

This is a throwback to my upbringing, to being raised in a belief that there is some inherently bad or broken part of us that, as humans, we must fight against (fight against it in ourselves and fight against it in others, namely in our children).

I don’t believe this.

At all.

I do not believe there is a soul on this planet who is naturally bad, born terrible, or inherently evil.

There are people who do some terrible, diabolical, tragic things. But I hesitate to even use the word “evil” to describe them, as this just seems to me a cop-out, as if I can all easily explain away such behaviors with a sweep of the hand, brushing off the deeper cause and responsibility we all have (to one another) by labeling someone as “just the way they are”.

That’s what “Ego” in the common spiritual sense of the word conveys to me. A generalization. A simplified reason for why we are the way we are, or why we do the things we do.

It’s not everyone’s connotation or intention, certainly not, but it is what comes up for me based on my own stories.

And yet, I find myself using the word myself.

But I use it in a different way.

Because what others see as “ego”, as this need to war with themselves, to take blame (not to be confused with responsibility), a reason they must work hard to change…

I just see fear. A need for understanding of ourselves, of our vulnerability that causes us to lash out in a broken attempt to protect ourselves (or others). A need for compassion for ourselves as we make mistakes, act imperfect – an important experience to our ability to learn.

What gets called “Ego” always boils down to fear.

We insist on our rightness, because we’re afraid of being wrong. We fight with our children, because we’re afraid of being judged or seeing them hurt or messing things up. We put on our big talk and incessantly point out our goodness, because we’re terrified we’re actually not good enough. We lack trust – for ourselves, for others, for the process of Life – because we’re afraid of what will happen if we’re not micro-managing every nuance of our lives.

This is vulnerability, imperfection, challenges, spiritual growth and the fear it brings up in us, what we’re afraid it means or says.

And we’ve learned that it must say something (about us, about others, about Life) based on the lessons we’ve absorbed, what we interrupted )based on what Life has shown us) about how we “should” be, all of which has been created based on the belief that what we actually are is inherently bad, evil, not good enough. And so we’ve learned we must fight to prove we’re otherwise (or prove them right, which is a topic for another day).

What if it were another way?

What if, instead of believing we are bad and seeing our badness and going to war with our badness, we all believed we were inherently whole and wonderful and worthy and good. And that even when we make mistakes, we see those mistakes as whole and wonderful and good in their ability to teach us and then show us how to recognize and amplify and make greater our whole, wonderful, goodness?

Doesn’t it stand to reason that if we believed we are whole, wonderful, and inherently worthy people who are capable of making mistakes (mistakes that don’t change Who We Are), we would then see our wholeness and our wonder and our worthiness and our goodness, instead of how terrible we all are? That we would see it in others too?

And then what would there be to fear or fight against?

Wouldn’t there only be the embracing of Life and learning and support for our real (whole, wonderful, good) selves and one another, even when we’re perfectly imperfect?

This is what I believe and experience.

When I see myself or someone else as inherently wrong, or inherently unworthy of trust until I or she or he proves otherwise, or inherently selfish until I (my fear, my Ego, my Ego-fear) changes that person or myself, I create disharmony and war and more fear. I pass it down like an old quilt, handed from one fearful generation to the next, tattered and torn and anything but warm and comfortable, but still insisting it be used because that’s the truth of it: “life is cold and drafty and we’re inherently tattered, after all”.

But when I find myself seeking the worthiness and goodness within a person’s soul, when I look beneath their tragic attempts to protect themselves or be seen or heard, when I go beyond the way in which I say they “should” be, I find myself with compassion for that person, with patience for that child, with understanding for where they are and how they came to be there.

And with that perspective firmly in my vision, what I see changes. And I and others change, based on what is seen in us.

We realize we are not our Ego (our fear, our big ugly mistakes). We realize we are human and having an experience of fear, an experience of making mistakes or painful choices. An experience of fear.

Just an experience of fear.

Not a being-ness of Ego to despise.

And then the pressure is released and the burden that was crushing our spirits is lifted and there is sudden lightness and energy and the ability to actually move, this time in a new and healthier and more whole direction.

When I call it your or my Ego, we have something new to war against, something we must fight or resist – either ourselves or each other.

Fighting and resisting is the antithesis of peace.

When I release the idea of right versus wrong and just focus on love versus fear (with love and compassion FOR the fear), peace comes inherent instead.

(Want to DIG IN to your own Ego-fear? That’s what this process is for.)

I have been dealing with a family that I assumed was normal and was trying to be compassionate with. It turns out they are sociopaths with no conscience. 😉 How can we be compassionate without being taken advantage of? – A Facebook Sistah

Ah, boundaries come to mind first.

Compassionate doesn’t mean sacrificial. Compassion includes yourself. It means seeing beneath another person’s behaviors to the pain or fear or (tragic) attempts to meet their needs. It means choosing to see them with empathy, to understand what brought them to this place. And sometimes it means compassionately saying “no” or “I love you and I’m not okay with this” or stepping away, removing yourself from something that is hurting you or others.

Even “sociopaths” are human beings with a long history of hurt or fear and no other tools, still doing the best they can, even if that’s not very wonderful at this point. Whether it’s your job to help them or simple love them is the question. if it’s not your place to help them, it is still compassionate to walk away…without judgment or labeling, or anger, or throwing more pain into the mix. But just simply, with love, saying “no more”.

There is probably a lot more to the work we get to do in situations like this. Things to DIG IN to. Empathy to practice. Hurt and expectations to examine. Judgment and reactions to release. But I think, for most of us, establishing boundaries that allow us to do that work comes first.

On occasion, I like to share some of the quotes I post on Twitter and Facebook, with some of my expanded thoughts on it here.

“Organic Wisdom” is what I have found speaking to me in those quiet moments, that guides me and that echoes Truth in my life. Please feel free to download, or share this image in any way you’d like.

Many of us know what a curse perfectionism is as adults. It keeps us working too hard at a job that doesn’t fulfill us, criticizing ourselves for our natural limitations, or judging ourselves by the talents and strengths of another, instead of by our own. Or it keeps us feeling hopeless, unwilling to even try since we know we can never attain that elusive perfection we’ve been convinced is the only thing worthy of our attention (or the attentions of others).

We know what perfectionism is. We don’t like it. We actively talk against it to other adults.

Every time my own perfectionism rears its head I remember what Thomas Edison allegedly told the reporter who asked what it was like to fail at inventing a practical lightbulb 1,400 times:

“I didn’t fail 1,400 times; I created a lightbulb in 1,400 steps.”

Mistakes are good, necessary. They are a part of learning, a part of being human. I could even argue that it’s the reason we are here, since the only way we truly learn what does work is by understanding what doesn’t.

They should be honored as pathways to deeper awareness and growth as human beings.

But we tell children from the time they’re infants that mistakes are bad, that multiple mistakes are worse.

We curse children with perfectionism without even realizing it.

Punishing a child for a mistake made is punishing them for being human.

It sends a very clear message that “you’re not good enough”, that “Who You Are is bad”, that “it’s not okay to make mistakes”.

Punishing a child for mistakes – whether it’s through grounding or shaming or any other means – can teach them to never take risks, since risks are likely to lead to mistakes.

“Play it safe, mediocre even.”

“Don’t stand up or rock the boat or you’ll be punished for it.”

“And whatever you do stay aware of how others are judging you and do everything in your power to look perfect in everyone’s eyes or you will be judged, unloved, and ultimately left alone.”

A better idea is to love them when they make a mistake, wrap them in our arms and ask them what happened and how it happened and listen as they talk. And with your presence and engagement, ask them what they’d like to do next.

Show them mistakes happen, and that the best way to handle them is with love, patience, and support from those we love.

You don’t have to be a perfect parent either.

It’s a myth you’ll never attain. But that hopefully won’t stop you from learning and growing as a parent.

We have so many mamas (and even non-mamas looking to sharpen their relationship skills!) joining us on MONDAY, SEPT 17TH for the Organic Parenting e-course to do just that – learn, grow, have fun, get support and release our triggers (and our guilt).

I am officially the mother of a teenager. Today is Zeb’s 13 birthday and he’s sleeping in, as is custom for his current body needs of non-stop eating and sleeping. 😉

12 was a tough year. Justin and I found new parenting triggers we got to DIG IN to, and Zeb transitioned through many tough phases. But once we found our emotional footing and our patience and compassion for his experience, we were able to help him over the hump and meet his deeper needs.

He’s kind, considerate and patient in ways you begin to wonder will ever happen when they are 4 or 7 or 11 and you’re dealing with your own fears of raising them “right”.

And that thought got me thinking yesterday.

I got back from a walk in the harbor and had sticky mud up to my ankles (it felt amazing by the way). I couldn’t go inside, so I interrupted Zeb’s project for help.

He said “sure!” and jumped up to get a bowl of water, asked me how my coaching call had gone and made friendly conversation as I washed my feet and legs. We talked about lunch and when I offered to make sandwiches he sweetly replied with a “yes, please” and then “thank you mom”.

He was friendly, and helpful.
He used his manners.
He was mature.

All the things we hope to see in our kids.

But a curious thought crossed my mind…(I like curious thoughts. I like to challenge myself and ask hard questions and look at things objectively.)

“This is what I’ve been hoping for. But have I parented for what I really want?”

Have I at all parented in a way that has taught him to please me? Or have I parented in a way that has allowed him to make genuine choices based on something more than what others think of him or how they’ll respond to him?

I do think I’ve worked hard at parenting in a way that does not make it his responsibility to meet my needs or please me or others.

But I haven’t been perfect by any means.

And that was the curious thought.

We all hope our children will behave…but do we really want children who do what they’re told without questioning and examining for themselves if it feels right to them?

We all hope our children will be kind….but do we want to raise people-pleaser who are fake in order to be accepted or generous in order to manipulate?

We all hope our children will make good choices…but do we want them being told what those choices are when that is the exact opposite of making a good choice for oneself?

Is what I’m creating what I REALLY hope to see?

(I remember having a conversation with a dad once when he told his 12 year old daughter to not resist his wishes. It brought up some discomfort within me and I asked if he really wanted her to learn never to resist what a man tells her to do, and how she can learn to set those boundaries without being allowed to resist the most trustworthy man of her life. It was an interesting convo that left us all thinking. The best kind.)

I’ll admit, as much as I’ve tried to quell my own parenting expectations and base my relationship with my child on honor and respect for his innate spirit and autonomy, I still get trapped in the ideas of “molding” a child.

Heck, even “modeling” for a child could be seen as manipulative if we’re doing something not because it is based on our values and who WE want to be, but based on who we want our children to become.

That’s not how I want to parent.

I choose to consciously parent based on relationship.

In a relationship, I don’t act phony to get the other person to do something. In a relationship, I don’t correct their behaviors. In a healthy relationship, I don’t make it someone else’s job to meet my needs.

In a relationship, I connect with the person, strive to understand their needs, share my own needs and come together to make us both happy and safe.

After I was examining all these thoughts yesterday, I was editing Naomi Aldort’s interview for the Organic Parenting e-course (coming next month!) and loved how serendipitously she talks about the guilt we can experience as parents.

It was a sweet little reminder to myself that it’s okay to not be a perfect human being, but to just continue doing my work as a person right along side this incredible person I have had the honor of sharing the last 13 years with.

Yes, I’m the mom of a teenager.

And it’s bittersweet, challenging, FUN (oh my goodness, he’s so much fun!), and curious all at once.

He shows me what I get to examine and I show him how to be a full human being and love and forgive yourself anyway.

My child IS amazing. He’s kind and considerate and helpful. And thankfully, I don’t think I had much to do with that. 😉

Psst! This is just a friendly reminder….

The registration for the Organic Parenting e-course will open on September 3.

I love my husband more than I thought possible. We have a damn good relationship. And it shows. So people often assume we work together effortlessly. That we’re not near opposites on so many topics. That we don’t have to work to find ourselves on the same page – or even the same book – when it comes to things like parenting or food or life in general.

But work, we do. Or sometimes don’t. 😉

Sometimes we slip into our own ego and refuse to budge. Sometimes we know the exact relationship tool that’s practically screaming to be used in the back of our mind and we tell it to “eff off”. We are a funny creature like that, aren’t we? Resisting the very thing we want.

Those are the days (weeks) that we can’t connect, that we can’t find agreement…that we feel 12 miles apart screaming through the wind in two different languages (what the crap is he talking about?!).

I end just wanting to be heard. Feeling resentful. We end up having a fight…or worse, shutting down to one another.

And our son feels the difference, even when we think we shelter him from it. He knows when we’re in love and when we’re acting out of fear. He thrives in the former.

Thankfully Justin and I always find our way back around to each other.

We reach through the discord, we calm our fears, and we lean into the trust we sometimes refuse. We take deep breaths and we come back around the Wisdom speak(scream)ing in the backs of our minds for our attention. And we find what we always find – that these principles, these tools work…when we allow them to.

Ah, allowing. Surrender. Trust.

Nothing we try works when those foundations are shadowed over. I can say all the right things, use all the right tools, but without Trust firmly in place I might as well sound like the adults in Charlie Brown’s world from all the good it does. (Wah wah wah.)

So Yes…It Starts With Trust

If you’re ready to lean into that, you’re halfway there. (And it took me a looooong time to get to that place. Lots of healing and lots of experience understanding he’s not the person I fear he’ll be.)

It starts with trust (well, really wasn’t doesn’t?) and moves from there.

If you’ve got trust in place (or maybe you’re even still working on it) and you want to join us in moving from from it, I’ve got just the tribes for you….and I’d love to see you – and your partner – there.

THE DEETS ::

We’re going to gather on Facebook on the page’s new chat room (this will be the first time I’ve tested it out with a big group, so let’s all gather our energy around the fact that it WILL be working – if not we’ll chat on the timeline instead).

Jeffrey Platts will be joining us as well! Jeffrey helps men and women connect more deeply and authentically in their relationships and is the perfect guest for this topic.

Facebook Circles are open to anyone. No cost, no commitment. Grab a cup’o something, and let’s circle around this topic, creating connection between us and deepening our own understanding.

The Organic Tribe – 2 Sessions
Thursday, April 12 and Monday, April 30

In the Organic Tribe this month we’re going to delve deeper into this topic with the coaching, tools and tribes that can help you breakthrough your resistance, your walls, your disharmony to co-create with your partner more connection and synergy and allow you to meet one another with the only things that will help your relationship to thrive – love and trust.

The Organic Tribe will meet over the phone, but don’t worry if you can’t make the time. You’ll receive the call recording of each session to your inbox. You’ll also receive access to the Organic Sisterhood, as well as the opportunity to win 1 of 2 complimentary coaching sessions with me. You can then stay with the Tribe each month or cancel whenever you wish.

AND I’ve lowered the price of the Tribe, making it more accessible to everyone!

I hope to see you at each of these, to hear your words, to share in our collective wisdom, and to help you find what you need to reconnect.

Most of us strive so hard to be perfect: the perfect mother, perfect partner, the perfect person with a perfect purpose. We try to create the perfect home and the perfect world with perfect hair and perfect kids.

And then we hear the messages that perfection is a myth, that it can’t be obtained and that striving for it is a maddening and pointless attempt to be something we’ll never be.

After all no one is perfect, right?

This is where I get all Big and Philosophical on you…

Both are wrong.

Zoom out with me – way out – and take in the Big Picture of your life, your journey of self-discovery and growth, your contribution to and purpose in the world.

The entire purpose of your life is to learn, to grow, to experience this human experience and make sense of it the best way you can.

You don’t need to strive for perfection and you don’t need to give up the idea of perfection…Because you are already perfect.

Where you are is already perfect. What you are experiencing, doing and thus learning is absolutely perfect.

You are the perfect mother for your children. You are the perfect person for your purpose. Everything you’re doing and experiencing is perfect.

Stay with me here.

It’s perfect that you make mistakes. It’s perfect that you beat yourself up for them. It’s perfect when you don’t do either.

It’s absolutely perfect when you wake up one day to realize something totally new and life-changing and it’s perfect when nothing ever seems to change.

It’s all perfect because it’s all purposeful, because when we zoom way out the little details that we stress over and complain about and push against blur together, and we see the process, the journey, the contrast that teaches us, the resistance that strengthens us, the meaning at the end of the story, the light at the end of the tunnel and the Magic that brought it all together, that connected the cosmic dots and created something amazing.

If our purpose in life is to learn, and if we learn best through our experiences, then yes, it’s all actually perfect.

And only by acknowledging that it’s perfect can we embrace it, learn from it and expand because of it.

Your mistakes have value. Your journey is oh-so-valuable.

But you won’t get that, you won’t experience that value, until you accept it as perfect, as exactly as it gets to be.

Yes, this applies to everyone – you and your kids, your partner and THAT one frustrating person you would rather not talk about. No matter what you all are doing or experiencing in your lives, you are all in the same perfect place.

Acknowledging that you are exactly where you need to be, and that everything you are experiencing or doing is perfect is not license to be an asshole, hit your children or just quit trying, anymore than the lack of a posted warning is license to shoplift.

On the contrary, and perhaps paradoxically, embracing the seemingly imperfect as perfect will take off that heavy weight of Not-Good-Enough, Less-Than, Doomed-To-Mess-Up, and leave you only with desire to move forward into seeking more….more Love, more connection, more experiences, more compassion, more beauty, more peace, more learning.

You cannot create your Life from a place of imperfection, unworthiness, brokenness, less-than. You can’t. Whatever you see this moment as being, you will notice and create more of the same.

But when you can connect to the fact that this moment is perfect – that it is here for you to experience and learn from, that’s it’s all opportunity, all of value – you can connect to the fact that you can create something more, better, and beautiful from it.

Only by stopping the fight against what is can we give ourselves the clarity and power to create what can be.

Look for it: What about that one frustrating thing is actually perfect?

“There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” – Storm Jameson

Posts navigation

I'm a life coach, writer, and a lover of travel, good wine, colorful hair, and my brand new cello. I've written the Digging Deep Toolbox, showing people how to overcome the bullshit that keeps them stuck and I talk about living an incredible life. Complete with Bucket Lists that actually get finished and relationships that leave us laughing more than fighting. Read more about me...

Topics

Topics

Favorites (Yours and Mine)

Search for:

Search for:

Topics

Topics

Who Is The Organic Sister?

About Me

I'm Tara Wagner, creator of Digging Deep, and a mentor and guide to women in the process of changing their lives from the inside out (but finding themselves confronting blocks or self-sabotage that arise along the way).
Read more about me here...